A Fox News Contributor On Being Gay, The GOP, And Religious Liberty

Guy Benson is gay, but he doesn’t really think that matters. The Townhall.com political editor does, however, think LGBT people should be more open to gay Republicans — even as he thinks gay issues present a “real obstacle” for his party.

WASHINGTON — Guy Benson — the baby-faced, fast-talking Fox News contributor who is the political editor at Townhall.com — has something to say.

“Guy here,” he writes in his forthcoming book. “So, I’m gay.”

This is not the main point of the book, however, not at all. Benson’s sexual orientation is given little fanfare — “a footnote in a 316-page book,” as he put it — inEnd of Discussion: How the Left’s Outrage Industry Shuts Down Debate, Manipulates Voters, and Makes America Less Free (and Fun), which Benson co-authored with Mary Katharine Ham, a fellow Fox contributor.

If his book and job titles don’t make things absolutely clear, Benson is a gay conservative. He’s also someone who says he cares much more about “a nuclearized Iran” and “the failures of Obamacare” than most gay issues. And while he said he doesn’t think it especially matters that he’s coming out, Benson was sitting down for an interview on precisely that topic. Rather than wait for the book’s release, he decided to come out publicly before then, sitting down with BuzzFeed News recently to discuss the book, the Republican Party, and his life.

“Gay rights is not something that dominates my attentions — or my passions — and that may seem incongruous, that may seem counterintuitive to a lot of people,” he said, “but the issues that I care about most undergird the reasons why I’m a conservative and have been forever and will be a conservative moving forward.”

The book will be published as the debate over religious liberty protections continues to dominate the presidential conversation around gay issues, something that Benson and Ham are aware of and tackle in the book. (The chapter of the book in which Benson comes out is titled, “Bake Me a Cake, Bigots.”)

Many conservatives have argued there must be a legal process for exemption from laws on the basis of religious belief. For his part, Benson argued that exact space between existence and participation is what has helped accelerate acceptance for marriages. The idea that same-sex couples’ marriages wouldn’t affect straight couples’ marriages was “a very effective argument that won over a lot of people,” he said.

“I’m for civil marriage, I’m for nondiscrimination laws — but I think there should be broad carve-outs for religious organizations, in particular, and narrow carve-outs for closely held businesses that serve the wedding industry,” he said.

As the religious liberty debate has gained traction, proponents of the religious liberty side of the debate have faced pushback — sometimes against specific individuals or their businesses — leading many conservatives to argue, more broadly, that internet culture is too quick to punish dissenters. Ham and Benson address that issue in their book, as well.

“I think a lot of gay people have felt for generations, obviously, that they have not been treated fairly, and I don’t think that coming to a point of social harmony and then pushing further in this almost vengeful, ‘Let’s get ‘em,’ hounding people out of jobs … [I]t’s not productive, it’s not good for the country,” he said.

The issue that most animated Benson, though, over the course of the 45-minute interview was the accusation sometimes made that gay Republicans must be self-hating people.

“I think that’s extraordinarily closed-minded and betrays a lack of imagination, at the very least,” he said.

Then, he let out an extended soliloquy in defense of what is likely to be seen as a part of his public persona now.

“A free-thinking, free citizen of a free country is not obliged to be confined to a bedazzled ideological straitjacket because that’s how they ‘ought’ to think and ‘ought’ to vote and ‘ought’ to rank their priorities,” he said. “It’s not true, it shouldn’t be true, and I think part of liberty and tolerance and coexistence is understanding that, ‘Hey, I might have something in common with this person over here, and they have every right under the sun to disagree with me on this whole panoply of public policy questions over here.’ And if their views on those things lead them to another conclusion about how they exercise their right to vote, to jump to the conclusion that that is borne of some secret, deep-seated self-loathing is just lazy and boring.

“And false.”

Benson knows there will be some conservatives, as well, who question him now. To them, he said he would just direct them to all that he’s written and said since he was in college at Northwestern University. “I do my best to shrug it off and just go on living my life.”

And, despite the disagreements Benson likely will have with some gay liberals, he acknowledges the importance of the progress that has been made on gay rights.

“I do not lose sight of how historically fortunate I am to be living in this country in this era, given who I am,” he said. As for his own path, he explained, “This is the final stage for me, personally, on this journey, where I have been incredibly fortunate to have been able to undertake each step of this process completely on my own terms.”

And now, he felt that it was time to let people know that his voice — already a part of the political discussion — was that of a gay man.

“Because we’re writing about it in the book, I did not want to cede control of that information to someone else,” he explained. He wanted to talk about this himself, rather than someone else, because he didn’t want it “to seem as though I was hiding or being untruthful or ashamed — and that hasn’t been my mentality at all. So, for a number of reasons, it seemed like the time had arrived and this is how we did it.”

It’s also, he acknowledged, a key time for his party on LGBT issues. Most notably, the Supreme Court will soon rule on a set of marriage and marriage-recognition cases, and is expected to rule bans on those marriages unconstitutional. “I think the party is in a state of flux, with deep disagreements — rooted in many cases, but not all, generationally — and that is a political dilemma at the moment,” he said.

Benson also acknowledged the base of the party largely remains opposed to issues like marriage equality, which he and Ham both support. And he noted the political reasons for why that opposition remains the default in the Republican Party. “You need that base, you need your core voters to turn out to win elections,” he said, adding that “the vast majority” of those who oppose marriage rights for same-sex couples “are not bigots.”

On the other end, he said, “You also, if you’re the party, have to look to the future and worry about this type of issue being one of those threshold issues for a lot of young people, where it is a barrier to entry to the party” — people who would otherwise consider Republican candidates but won’t “so long as their party is discriminating against my brother, who’s gay, or my dear friend who is gay.”

Calling that “a real obstacle,” Benson said, “I don’t think there’s a quick fix to that.” He added that he’s been watching the responses to the “would you attend a same-sex wedding” question, calling the affirmative answers from some candidates “a softening, without conceding the policy question.”

Benson distanced himself, slightly, from those obstacles — but left the door open for more involvement going forward.

“Look, I’m as fascinated as anyone to see how it plays out. I don’t feel like I’m going to become particularly activist on any of this stuff,” he said. “From time to time—” he stopped. “We’ll see.”

Quotes & Notes

"Terrorism flourishes because they are protected by a Left-wing denial industry" . --- author unknown

"Facts are rarely allowed to contaminate the big-government utopian delusion of the Left" -- author unknown

"Without double standards, the Left/Statists/Liberals would have no standards at all" -- author unknown

"The champions of socialism call themselves progressives, but they recommend a system which is characterized by rigid observance of routine and by a resistance to every kind of improvement. They call themselves liberals, but they are intent upon abolishing liberty. They call themselves democrats, but they yearn for dictatorship. They call themselves revolutionaries, but they want to make the government omnipotent. They promise the blessings of the Garden of Eden, but they plan to transform the world into a gigantic post office. Every man but one a subordinate clerk in a bureau. What an alluring utopia! What a noble cause to fight!" -- Ludwig von Mises (1881-1973) Economist and social philosopher

"And what is Fascism? Fascism is private ownership, private enterprise, but total government control and regulation. Well, isn’t this the liberal philosophy?

Liberals value theory over truth and facts

The conservative, so-called, is the one that says ‘less government, get off my back, get out of my pocket, and let me have more control of my own destiny.'" -Ronald Reagan

"Liberals sense of moral righteousness doesn't come from achievement - it comes from believing that you are a bad person... for a Liberal to be morally superior, they must paint Conservatives as morally inferior, even if they have to lie. It's an unearned sense of moral superiority."

"The left no longer makes arguments about policies' effectiveness. Their only argument is character assassination"

"The religion of Leftism supersedes the law, fairness or personal integrity."

"...liberals are big fans of freedom speech, freedom of expression, freedom of anything and everything - unless, of course, they disagree with whatever the “anything or everything” is." - Adam Corolla

"I have never understood why it is 'greed' to want to keep money you've earned, but not greed to want to take someone else's money". - Thomas Sowell

"Have I not destroyed my enemy when I have made him into my friend?" -Abraham Lincoln

"The most intolerant people I've ever met are those Liberals who consider themselves most tolerant." -MB

"Freedom is never more than one generation away from extinction. We didn’t pass it to our children in the bloodstream. It must be fought for, protected, and handed on for them to do the same, or one day we will spend our sunset years telling our children and our children’s children what it was once like in the United States where men were free."

"Well, the trouble with our liberal friends is not that they are ignorant, but that they know so much that isn’t so." -Ronald Reagan

"The problem with Socialism (Liberalism) is that eventually, you run out of other peoples money" - Margaret Thatcher

"If you think criminals and lunatics are going to obey gun control laws, you're a special kind of stupid" -MB

"One thing you have to say about the Left: They never miss an opportunity to let the mask of hatred slip. It’s practically Pavlovian; they are so invested in the myth of their own righteousness that their “tolerance” fetish goes right out the window whenever they suffer the slightest affront to their delusional notion of how the world works." - Michael Walsh